Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] the joy of windows drivers
From: Robin Whittle (rw_AT_firstpr.com.au)
Date: Thu Oct 18 2001 - 05:42:29 EEST
Further to this note about the perplexing diversity and
incompatibilities of Windows sound drivers . . .
A friend of mine specialises in putting together Windows systems to run
commercial multitrack audio programs. He chooses all the hardware,
drivers, and has his own approaches to configuration and tweaks, with
great fussiness accorded to SCSI cards, hard drives, motherboards, CPUs,
RAM - *everything*. Even then, he has problems with getting low
latencies and with incompatibility problems between various hardware and
software elements.
Neither of us are fond of Macs, and we certainly don't want yet another
operating systems in our lives, but after all this effort, he found that
someone who knew nothing about computers bought a modern Mac, a multi-
I/O sound card (24 bit / 96 kHz etc. etc.), and some fancy software
package, took it home, plugged it in and was making music with no fuss
whatsoever! We had to respect this! It helps that the Mac environment
is more tightly controlled in terms of hardware and software. Perhaps
it also helps that (according to my understanding of pre OS-X operating
systems) the OS gives full control of the machine to each application -
which explains how crashable Macs are, or were.
I think computer hardware and software typically evolves in messy
ways. I think we should be very thankful for those who devised the
Internet standards, and for Philips and Sony for doing such a bold,
good, job with the CD.
- Robin
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